


Stranger

by BlackNBlueUnderOrange



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Derogatory Language, Family Drama, I made this entirely on my iPod jfc, M/M, POV Noiz' sibling, POV OC, Who I'm pretty sure I made up?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackNBlueUnderOrange/pseuds/BlackNBlueUnderOrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I hated the man my brother brought back from Japan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for sexist and homophobic language, and xenophobia.  
> I probably got quite a few aspects of canon wrong, so I apologize.

I hated the man my brother brought back from Japan. For one thing, he was a guy. Whenever they looked at each other they got this stupid look on their face, so I knew before brother said anything that they were involved.  
"This is Aoba," my brother had said. "He's the reason I'm alive today, and he's the reason I came back to you. I want to live together with him, and with you as my family."  
The guy's hands were fidgeting and he was grimacing in the way one does when they don't know a decent lick of German, and his hair, which he wore long like a faggot, covered his eyes whenever he looked uneasily at the floor. When my brother finished his speech he smiled to his side, and the stranger returned the favor with flat eyes and downturned lips. My brother laughed and started talking in rapid-fire Japanese, and the guy's face turned into more of an amused pout. The grins stretched the holes in my brother's face where he'd removed his piercings.  
I hadn't seen my brother smile since the summer before second grade.  
My parents laughed their laugh the way they do whenever they feel lost, and I shoved the coffee table in my haste to stand up. "Matti!" my father scolded.  
"I'm returning to my room. I have a lot of work to do. I won't be needing supper." I turned on my heel and strode out of the room, my neck feeling stiff and bloated. My brother shouted after me but was quickly cut off by a soothing stream of foreign words. I grit my teeth and suppressed a snarl. When I finally closed my door behind me, my back thudded against the wood and I curled in on myself, my throat letting out a strange high pitched noise I wasn't aware I could make. I rolled so my shoulder was the one on the door and thudded the side of my fist on the jamb and I sobbed like the child I'd been when Noiz had been locked away.  
My brother had disappeared the day he had turned eighteen, and in the year and seven months since then had dropped no signs of where he had gone, or if he was even alive. Mother and father had fretted themselves sick, and at fifteen I had learned the workings of mother's company more intimately than I imagined I ever would. He'd then returned three months ago. He'd apologized to a sobbing mother and faint father, and swiftly secured himself a big role in the family buisiness. He worked dilligently and spent all of his down time with us. He asked for a week off quite suddenly, and then returned with that bitch on his arm.  
I should have known he'd never return out of love for us.

\-----------------------------------

I hated the guy my brother brought home. I hated him because he could distract my brother from anything with a few words. I hated him because his hands shook when ever Noiz brought him to corporate parties. I hated him because he always clinked his silverware obnoxiously whenever they came over for dinner, and how conversation would always stall as Noiz translated into Japanese and then back into German, and how he had this stupid old Allmate who never barked but always tried to curl up in the guy's lap whenever he sat down. I hated how he held himself (like he was scared of standing straight) and how he dressed himself (like he'd never touched sophisticated taste in his life). I was convinced he had seduced my brother for money, and I ignored the way he banished the worry lines from my brother's forhead with light touches. I detested the way my brother kissed him in public, and ignored how he looked flabberghasted every time.  
I hated that my brother loved Aoba more than he loved me.

\-----------------------------------

I met Aoba for the first time without Noiz on his arm when I'd gone for a walk around the halls during a company party. He had been leaning exhaustedly on the banister right before the stairs, before he looked up abruptly at me when I came near and straightened himself sheepishly. His eyes were tinged with red (drugs, I'd thought, of course he'd sneak away from an important event like this to get high).  
"Good evening," he'd said to me. "What... you here?"  
I scoffed at his broken language. "Why are YOU here?" I'd replied scathingly. As he stuttered, and tried and failed to emit anything that sounded even remotely like German, I continued, "Hiding. Of course.  I suppose my brother must be taking this opportunity to earn back the respect you no doubt ruined for him in front of his buisiness partners." I'd spoken quickly, just to spite him, but his eyes had hardened and I knew he had understood exactly what I'd said.  
He grumbled something fierce under his breath and straighened his back and shoulders. He stepped past me, and gestured in the direction of the party. "ほら、ノイズ一緒に喋ようよ," he babbled in Japanese. He paused and his eyes turned up in concentration. "えぇ、Noizu, talk with Noiz." He looked me in the eye, determined. "Fix... thing."  
I scoffed and turned away, toward the staircase, intent on walking away, on doing better things with my time. But...  
Aoba grabbed my forearm, not tightly but lightning quick, and I reacted by shaking him off violently. He... he lost his balance, and, and I heard a crack, and... He hadn't even fallen to the bottom of the stairs, but there was a fractured crimson stain on the banister and his body was limp but not unmoving, it was sliding slowly toward the next step down, and...  
I ran to get Noiz. I forgot that I wanted Aoba out of my brother's life and envisioned roiling anger and hopeless desperation on Noiz' face, and I couldn't think I couldn't think and I was there in front of my brother then. He stared at me with distant concern, the only concern he could ever bring himself to show to us, to his family, to his family without Aoba, oh God.  
"A-Aoba, Aoba..." I couldn't make the right words come out of my mouth, but my brother's eyes sharpened.  
I'd never said Aoba's name before.  
"What's wrong?" he demanded. "What happened?"  
I couldn't stop my shoulders from shaking and I grabbed his arm, oh God, and pulled him back the way I had come.


	2. Hospital

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While you're reading this story, remember to take a deep breath and remember Matthias is a drama queen.

My brother hadn't touched Aoba since he'd gingerly lowered his body to the landing, but there was still a dark stain on the forearm of his right sleeve. He'd called paramedics and clearly, curtly explained the situation. He'd then sat on his knees a few inches from Aoba and stared coldly down. I stood at the top of the stairs, my mind somehow running a mile a minute and yet not really thinking anything at all, and I leaned on the wall, halfway around the corner, for support.  
Weren't people supposed to... to cry, and fret, weren't they supposed to scream when something like this happened? I suppose neither me or my brother screamed when Noiz broke his nose and a classmate's arm, the first day we were let on the new athletic field for recess.  
My brother hadn't touched Aoba, but he ran alongside the stretcher with the paramedics all the way to the ambulance, and as the doors closed behind them I hoped briefly that I hadn't handed over the keys to mum and pa. They sat there, a godsend, in my pocket, and even though I wasn't supposed to drive without supervision I started the car on auto pilot.

\-----------------------------------

I somehow reached the hospital in time to see Aoba's stretcher go into a hallway when I ran through the lobby doors. I sprinted until I caught up, which really couldn't have been that long. They were moving at a brisk jog at best, and slowed to an agonizing pace whenever they adjuted the stretcher's direction.  
Noiz trailed along with the stretcher, arms limp at his sides, and kept himself next to Aoba's head, eyes never straying from his lover's closed ones. When a nurse, his placating hand on Noiz' shoulder, told him he wasn't allowed any further, my brother stopped, and nodded, and stood calmly in the right side of the hallway, out of the way.  
I stood parallel him, farther down the hallway, and wondered why I'd broken driving laws to stand in complete silence with a brother who didn't love me waiting for a stranger who had ruined- who-  
A stranger I'd pushed to his death.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you look any of the Japanese up on Google translate, don't expect it to make any sense. I'll post a version with the Japanese switched to English italics, but this should be read first with the experience either I or Matthias has had reading this story. Or not, if I got the Japanese wrong, haha. My Japanese is completely fair game to correct me on.

What seemed like an incredibly short time later a doctor with a calming air announced that family could visit him. "There's always some unpredictabily with head wounds, but the injury wasn't that serious," she said evenly. "He should be fine."  
Noiz' face crumpled then, shoulders dropping in relief, and he let out a sudden violent sob, an open mouthed whine like a miniature scream.  
My mouth moved of its own accord. "We're brothers," I had interjected, not a lie but deliberately misleading. She looked skeptically at my and Noiz' caucasian features. "Please let us see him." Apparently her skepticism wasn't enough reason reason to hold us back, and she led me and a partially composed Noiz to Aoba's room. There were four beds, three of them occupied, with Aoba partially curtained off from the room's other occupants.  
The bed was adjusted for a sitting position, and Aoba smiled broadly and groggily in Noiz' direction. Noiz' face crumpled again and he collapsed in the stool next to the bed, gripping Aoba's hand and wrist with both hands, crying with his whole body in a way I'd seen no one cry before. I hadn't seen my brother cry before today.  
"おい、心配するな." Aoba uttered soothing words to my brother, and I found myself wishing I knew Japanese, not the other way around. "オレ平気だよ、な？ 偏頭痛より完全にいたくない."   
As they muttered to each other in sweet assurances my throat tightened and my hands shook even after I curled them into fists, because I couldn't tell what they were _saying_ , and I'd pushed Aoba-I'd-it was all my  _fault_. It was all my fault and Noiz could  _know_. Noiz would know and Aoba was always more important than me, and I'd never be able to be within touching distance of my brother again-  
Aoba finally noticed me standing by the door and his face became guarded. Of course, of course, of course, I pushed him down the fucking stairs, oh God-while I stood there frozen in my anxiety, Aoba's face softened inexplicably. He turned to Noiz, who was still murmuring things into Aoba's hand, and asked something. "弟を呼んでくれ."  
Noiz glanced at me then back at Aoba, his face full of confusion. Aoba raised an eyebrow and gve my brother a flat look. "分かったよ," my brother uttered back gruffly. "Mattias," he called, and I couldn't breathe because he barely said my name anymore, "come over here."  
I walked on shaky legs until I stood at the foot of the bed, and somehow the flimsy curtain behind my back was a comfort.  
"I good," Aoba said, stretching and flexing the fingers of his free hand. "Good, see?" He smiled softly, and turned to my brother again. "「マッティ悪くない」言ってくれ？"  
"なぁ-何で？！何かしたのか." They were speaking heatedly now,  and I couldn't stop myself from flinching at my brother's yell. Aoba lowered his eyebrows and whispered something in a no-nonsense tone.  
"All right, all right," he said to Aoba in German. Then he turned his head to me. "He wanted me to tell you that you're not a bad person, or you didn't do anything wrong, or something. He wasn't giving me any explanation." He gave weak glare to Aoba, who was smiling contentedly again. "What happened?"  
A sob broke through my lips and I covered my face with my arms in shame. I couldn't believe it-I had been stewing in my own guilt and self-pity, barely thinking about the person I'd hurt in the first place, and _I_ was being comforted by  _them_. I felt so young, even though I'd been talking as equals with middle-aged buisinessmen not a few hours before.  
Suddenly there were arms around me, and my breath stopped at the unfamiliar senstion. It was uncomfortable, and I could practically feel my brother's blood-stained sleeve on my back, but. As I was shocked out of my self-loathing, I couldn't help but revel in the fact that Noiz had left his Aoba's side to comfort me. 

**Author's Note:**

> Noiz' route was my favorite, and this story was born out of my frustration that re:connect went in the creepy dub-con sex direction instead of the fluffy/dramatic meet the parents direction. Um, I know a very limited amount of Japanese, so that probably doesn't sound like Aoba at all. Speaking of, I haven't written any fanfiction since the seventh grade, so OOC ahoy! Any constructive criticism (or unconstructive praise, haha) is welcome. Have a nice day!


End file.
